Big Love: The Tangled Web We Wed

Big Love's most surreal season yet went expectedly nuts for its finale. With Bill's election and the polygamists' outing nearing, the family became more fractured than ever before, as serious doubts about their united future shook the once happy Henricksons.

Early in the episode, Bill briefed the wives on his post-election plan, hoping to finally bring the three women to consensus regarding the inevitable public declaration of their lifestyle, pending the state senate win. Despite disagreements on the issue throughout the season, the wives played along, until Barb, questioning Bill's motivations and morals, dropped a show-changing bomb later on, declaring that their family and hard-won life was no longer her dream.

Washington insider Marilyn Densham, the season four standout played by Sissy Spacek, echoed Barb's uncertainty with her own accusatory attack on Bill's true character. After alternately aiding and threatening Bill's senate bid throughout her story arc with insidious political power plays, Marilyn denounced Mormonism entirely and took Bill to task for his own moral bankruptcy: deceiving his constituents during the senate race by hiding his career-ending multiple marriages.

After his opponent's concession, Bill ascended the capitol's steps, finally able to reveal his true self in an act he had hoped would justify the deception that marred his campaign. In a moment four years in the making, the Henricksons finally became public polygamists with understandable reluctance. It is unsure how the family will fare in the coming season, or whether they will remain a family by their own definition at all. In the final scene, with the wives decked out in their red, white, and blue symbolic finery, Bill's pathetic plea to accept him and his family as normal Americans resounded with anxious pathos. While the audience at the capitol left in disgust, viewers were left in rapt attention, staring at the strained and stranded family that might have just walked itself off a cliff into outer darkness.